‘Stop Looking at Your Feet’

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Notes

¹ For more extended descriptions of the dance marathon phenomena, see Becker (2003), Calabria (1993) and Martin (1987).

² A previous 3-hour workshop production was staged on 25 November 2008 at The Latvian House in Toronto.

³ Lehmann's articulation of the ‘postdramatic’, while already over a decade old in the original German and operative in European dramaturgy throughout (and clearly before) that period, only received English translation (in book form) in 2006. The recent heated exchange between the author and the book's reviewer in NYU-based journal The Drama Review (TDR) (see Fuchs 2008 and Lehmann et al. 2008) is direct evidence of the strength of the response from North American scholars to Lehmann's assertions and underlines the potential tension between European and US-American performance conventions within academic thought.

⁴ For a sense of this aspect of their work, see the performance text What the Thunder Said in Barton et al. (2008: 7–57). See also video footage at <www bluemouthinc.com>.

⁵ For a full discussion, see Barton (2009).

⁶ For a thorough discussion of this paradox, see Loxley (2007: 97–147).

⁷ Shannon Jackson has considered the relationship between ‘Brechtian defamiliarization:’ and ‘Butlerian resignification:’ within theatre and performance studies (see 2004: 188–91).

⁸ I have just received a 3-year research grant (2009–11) from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to explore inter/actual dramaturgy in relation to collaborative devising practices. Pil Hansen has just been awarded a SSHRC post-doctoral scholarship to explore inter/actual dramaturgy in relation to cognition and memory in dance and devising.

⁹ ‘O'Connell contends, “I would argue that many of the choices we collectively make are intuitive, meaning informed yet impulsive or unconscious, in the moment and clear yet not specifically articulated in a thematic or theoretical context.” Reeves extends these observations to suggest that focusing on or over-analysing a particular strategy within their collaborative process runs the risk of disproportionately emphasizing a single aspect of their multifaceted approach:’ (Barton 2006b: 58).

¹⁰ The workshop took place at the Wooster Group's Performing Garage in Soho, NYC, in August 2007.

¹¹ There were two public showings during a one-month residency at Montreal's Place des Arts in July and August 2008. B

¹² Dance Marathon has since had a second, highly successful production (22–25 June 2009) as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival of the Senses.